An antique collector rarely finds a deck of early American playing cards. To Puritan settlers, cards were "the devil's picture book". Cards were not seen in respectable American homes until the 1840s. These early cards had pious verses on one side and the usual designs on the other. Until then, the moral ban on cards was strict since they were a part of a gambler's tools.

Q. Write the word from the third sentence which in your judgment betrays the author's tongue-in-cheek attitude.